After Earth

This article is about the film. For the heavy metal band, see After Earth (band).
After Earth
Theatrical release poster
Directed byM. Night Shyamalan
Screenplay by
Story byWill Smith
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyPeter Suschitzky
Edited bySteven Rosenblum
Music byJames Newton Howard
Production
companies
Distributed bySony Pictures Releasing
Release dates
  • May 1, 2013 (2013-05-01) (Tokyo)
  • May 31, 2013 (2013-05-31) (United States)
Running time
100 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$130 million[2][3]
Box office$243.8 million[3]

After Earth is a 2013 American post-apocalyptic action film co-produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who co-wrote the script with Gary Whitta. The film was loosely based on an original story idea by Will Smith about a father-and-son trip in the wilderness before it was eventually reworked into a sci-fi setting, taking place 1,000 years in the future where humans evacuated Earth to another planet due to a massive environmental catastrophe. It is the second film after The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) that stars real-life father and son Will and Jaden Smith; Will Smith, his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, his brother-in-law Caleeb Pinkett, and business partner James Lassiter also produced the film via their company Overbrook Entertainment while Columbia Pictures distributed the film. The film was co-produced by John Rusk, who was also the first assistant director on this film as well as on many of Shyamalan's other films.[4]

The film follows father and son, Cypher and Kitai Raige, who find themselves crash-landing on the abandoned Earth. When Cypher gets injured from the crash, Kitai must travel across the wild environment in search of a backup beacon to fire a distress signal, while having to defend himself from the highly evolved animals, as well as an extraterrestrial creature that detects its prey by smelling fear.

The film was released in IMAX on May 31, 2013. Upon release, After Earth was panned by film critics, who targeted the story, visuals, performances of Will and Jaden Smith, and Shyamalan's direction. It made $243.8 million at the box office against a budget of $130 million.

  1. ^ "AFTER EARTH (12A)". British Board of Film Classification. May 14, 2013. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  2. ^ FilmL.A. (May 2014). "2013 Feature Film Study" (PDF). FilmL.A. Feature Film Study. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 4, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
  3. ^ a b "After Earth". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved May 27, 2021.
  4. ^ Cormier, Ryan. "The Delawarean behind Shyamalan's hits". The News Journal. Retrieved 2020-12-05.